The headlines are shocking, to say the least. “Religious children are meaner than their secular counterparts, study finds,” The Guardian intones, adding, “Religious belief appears to have negative influence on children’s altruism and judgments of others’ actions even as parents see them as ‘more empathetic.’”

The Daily Beast is even harsher, with this headline: “Study: Religious Kids Are Jerks.” The aforementioned study comes from a four-and-a-half-page research note in the journal Current Biology by University of Chicago professor Jean Decety and six others scholars. There’s only one problem with the research—well, okay, there’s actually more than one problem!

This Breakpoint article is a breakdown of a “study” used to try to marginalize Christians and Christianity (and Christ; good “luck”…). It takes apart the “study” in terms of how the experiment was performed, and how the results were interpreted. A ludicrous “study,” and a good expose. Full article: Mean Religious Kids?

Pseudo-studies like this have been bandied about via Internet and dead-tree “scientific” publications for years or even decades. It’s tempting to dismiss & ignore them as “background noise”, but they poison social discussions and tarnish real earnest scientific research and application.